Photo: Daniel Johansson
When it comes to deadly death/thrash with just the right amount of punk / melodic impact, it’s hard to question the reliable discography for The Crown to satisfy that aural spirit. Even amidst a few lineup changes, their latest record Crown of Thorns still contains a raw, unbridled set of songs that contain all the screams, growls, jackhammer riffs plus a furious bass/drum rhythm section that will cause heads to bang incessantly. We reached out to guitarist Marko Tervonen once again to catch up on the natural shifts that influenced the sound of this record, how the lineup changes impacted specific changes, what it was like being back behind the producer chair, video choices, AI / technology concerns, watching the development of his son’s band parallel his own efforts through The Crown, and future plans which could include a US tour run in 2025…
Dead Rhetoric: Crown of Thorns is the latest studio record for The Crown. It’s mentioned in the background information that the band felt the previous two albums Cobra Speed Venom and Royal Destroyer are like siblings. Did you know straight away how you wanted this new album to differ in terms of songwriting, style, and performances from those previous efforts – and where do you see this record sitting in the catalog for the group?
Marko Tervonen: I think quite soon after recording Royal Destroyer we as a band discussed whether we wanted to continue on in this style as a trilogy with a third album, working well with Cobra Speed Venom and Royal Destroyer. Some time went by, there were some changes that happened in the band. One big thing was (bassist) Magnus (Olsfelt) left the band, and Magnus and I were 50/50 co-writers within the band. His departure, a lot of things changed. Magnus wrote a bit more of the punk-ish, rock-ish songs and I wrote the more melodic and metal ones. It became obvious that when I would write more of the songs it would become a bit more metal. That was the first idea that came up after he left, that we needed to go the other way, do something fresh, something new.
That also led to a lot of other ideas, such as tuning up the guitars as we did in the past. Since I knew if I was going to write a bit more of the songs, it was going to be melodic, and that led into other aspects. When we discussed the artwork of the album as well, that was the first thing that was done for this record. I think it was done about two years ago. My idea was, let’s do that first, feel happy with it and feel inspired, and then deliver the right types of songs that the album art needs. It became clear because of all those ideas that we were going to create something new.
The artwork is based on a bridge from our hometown. We were called Crown of Thorns as you may know back in the day. There were a lot of things that just pushed us away from the last two albums, and creating new terms. I do think it’s a new chapter, something new and something fresh, that’s how I look at it.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you see the rhythm section changes between Mattias and Mikael as well as the return of guitarist Marcus Sunesson to the band impacting The Crown currently? How do lineup movements effect the band’s chemistry and output this deep into your career?
Tervonen: Yeah, it always does. Even when you change one ingredient, it changes everything. Some good stuff came out of it – especially with Mikael in the band. We go way back, he’s an old friend. He’s a bit younger than us, but he always had The Crown as one of his absolute favorite bands. He was a big fan of our original drummer Janne (Saarenpää). When he came into the band, he had different views on things. I remember the first or second rehearsal, he asked us why do we tune down the guitars? Good question – I never thought twice about it since we have tuned down after Possessed 13. I started to think seriously about why the hell are we tuning down? After Possessed 13 we just continued to tune down and keep things at C tuning. That was good input from him, we don’t need this low-end stuff. We do have punk stuff and thrashy stuff and all of that, and it suit things better to tune things up. Mikael brought back a lot of the technical stuff into the material.
Mattias’ background comes from more of the punk, crust scene. In the end, Mattias contributed with two songs, and I did eleven songs. If you change one member, it changes everything. Some of the input can be the beginning of some new ideas, that’s a good thing. Having Marcus back is really cool – in a sense I didn’t see it coming. He’s been away for a decade. When everything led to the final question of if Marcus wanted to rejoin the band, he said yeah. It was cool. When we were recording the solos at my studio, it was really great. We said goodbye with a big smile on our faces. It’s cool for him to execute these types of solos now.
Dead Rhetoric: Did you also feel reinspired to handle the production duties this time again?
Tervonen: Yeah. I would say everything started from the realization that when Magnus left, I would be the main, responsible one of the band. In one way, for the first time I could focus on the songs for the bigger picture, for the whole album in that sense. What song should be the start, what goes in the middle and for the end. Where do we go fast, where do we slow down? When I recorded the album, that worked great. When we are in the studio, we don’t mess around much. We execute (things), and we know what to do. It was all about the execution in the studio, capturing performances. I didn’t want to mix it though, so we left that to another guy Jonas Kjellgren. I do mix a lot of music for other bands, but when it comes to The Crown it’s good to have another person with more of an objective view of things. It’s challenging for me to see it being that involved with The Crown, that’s why I wanted someone I could trust.
Recording-wise it was effortless in a way. We were very well prepared. Mikael hammered down the drums in three days. Even including the bonus tracks, it was 14 songs. It was all about going into the studio and executing.
Dead Rhetoric: Tell us about the video shoot for “Churchburner” – was this an obvious standout single to premiere, and what special memories do you have regarding the performance aspects or acting/ character sequences?
Tervonen: We continued doing things in a way where we were able to record at least two videos at the same time, in an easy way. We changed some of the locations and the clothing. We did “Churchburner” and another song – we wanted to do a bit more than just pure performance footage. We put a lot of trust in the guy that handled the video shoots. If it’s just performance videos, it’s not always that interesting. You want to squeeze in something a bit extra. For the performance video part, we managed to rent a huge warehouse thing, a lot of depth in there. It felt like shooting the “One” video from Metallica (laughs). The second video has a bit of a different vibe.
Dead Rhetoric: What I enjoyed most about the “Churchburner” video is the fast-moving cuts between the performance and narrative side…
Tervonen: We did as well. It was something that we messed around with a lot. You always try to find the pace of the editing and the flow of the video that goes with the music as well. Using those external sequences as well, builds up the story – even if it’s not an obvious story. We aim for that, and it worked out pretty cool, I think.
Dead Rhetoric: Jonas Kjellgren handled the mixing/mastering for Crown of Thorns. What do you enjoy most about his process and work ethic to get a proper final sound for the group?
Tervonen: Jonas is a fan of The Crown. It gave me confidence that he wouldn’t try any super weird approaches. Since I did the recording, I usually commit to a sound. I tweak the sounds, and I record it. I think about EQ on the way in. He got solid sounds from me. The first mix he sent me, it sounded familiar, and he understood what we are all about. We need the punchiness on the drums, the vocals up front, but also a bit produced but not overproduced. It made things sound professional in a way. He had some cool ideas – adding a timpani tom in places. We felt we were locked on, and that was a cool thing. I’ve known Jonas was a cool guy working with audio – but not the type of music that’s my favorite as he has worked with bands like Sabaton in the past. He does this full-time, every day he would send new versions of the songs, it was done in a couple of weeks.
Dead Rhetoric: The special edition releases contain 13 songs, including 3 bonus tracks, which will not appear on the main versions of the record. How did the band, label, and management come to terms with what would appear where, as it must be a difficult decision to choose in the late stages of recording who gets what tracks?
Tervonen: Yeah. I can agree. That’s the weird thing, with the whole ‘bonus’ song thing. It’s not like in the past, as you said it will be available in some format, it will be available on Spotify. My idea was those 13 songs, which should be the album. The bonus songs are pretty damn good. Even the label thought “Eternal Infernal” should be on the main album. It is what it is. Somehow for some business reasons, there is a main album and a special edition. I hope people that want to hear them, they will hear them.
Dead Rhetoric: What continually fuels your desire to play and perform in extreme thrash / death metal this deep into your musical career? Do you feel like it’s easier or harder to channel those creative desires now compared to your early days as a musician?
Tervonen: In a way, it’s more challenging and difficult. Now when we are eleven, twelve albums in, I always try to prioritize new ideas and new approaches to the songs. The more songs you make, the more difficult this becomes. With this album, I wrote 19 foundations to the songs that I developed and filtered from. I wanted every song to have a unique place in the album. I like the fact that people can’t pick one song and think that is a typical song for The Crown. I removed a lot of stuff I did because it did remind me of another song we’ve previously done.
What still inspires and gives me chills is that I still feel that we haven’t done our best album yet. It’s that teenage Marko in me that still says, no – you can do better (laughs).
Dead Rhetoric: What worries or concerns you the most about the world that we live in today? If you had unlimited resources, energy, and finances to tackle one or two of the biggest challenges facing the world today, what areas would you work on for the greater good of humanity long-term?
Tervonen: (laughs). That’s kind of a big question. We know that there are some seriously fucked up things going on in the world today. There will be always terrible things like poverty, war, and all of that. I wish I could snap my fingers to this, but there are a lot of aspects that are going a bit south at the moment. Technology-wise, this AI threat that is happening at the moment is really, really interesting. I normally would not push for laws or legislation too much, but in this case, it really needs to be regulated. It is already scary. Ten years ago we loved the internet, and now we are so far between fact and fiction. Especially when you add AI, deep fakes, you can’t trust anyone. It doesn’t make you a better person when you don’t trust anything. It’s a very wide question. It’s quite alarming these days.
Dead Rhetoric: What’s the best piece of advice you ever received either regarding the music business or life in general? And when people ask you for advice in these areas, what ideas or words of wisdom do you like to impart?
Tervonen: Bands ask me for advice – and it can be very difficult to digest it when you are younger. I would say that regarding music – if you want to play in a band and write music, you really need to be honest with yourself and enjoy things. If you prefer power metal, focus on power metal because that’s going to be your strength. Don’t try to force yourself just to get into death metal because it may be the flavor of the month. Try to stay honest – if you like jazz music or simple pop music, focus on that. If you have your heart with you, that’s when you will feel happy, that’s when you will do your best work. I know when you are younger that’s tough, you want to be like your heroes and just copy things. Don’t be afraid, follow your heart as that’s a good guideline way forward.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you feel about the development of your son’s band Sarcator over the years?
Tervonen: That’s pretty cool to follow. We started out at different times age-wise, it’s the same path they are taking. Same challenges, same situations. They end up having the same issues. It’s a different age of releasing albums compared to the old media input. I always say to Mateo, if he wants my advice I’ll give it to him – but it’s based on what we went through in the 1990s. It’s also important for them to find their own way, through the mistakes to get to the good stuff. It’s amazing to follow their path – they released two albums on a small label and then got picked up by Century Media. The same thing happened to us – we did two albums on a small label, then got picked up by Metal Blade. Now they are discussing tours, interview schedules, release dates.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you see the next twelve months or so shaping up for The Crown as far as activities? Will you be doing more studio session work in your studio with other musicians / bands as well?
Tervonen: Yeah, that’s something I embrace. I enjoy working with other bands. The cool thing is nowadays, it’s not an obstacle working globally with other bands. That has been my main focus the past four or five years. If I work with a band on the other side of the world, we have the same sense of humor, same category of people all over the world in the metal scene. The Crown – we are discussing how we will approach 2025. We are discussing more shows. The cool thing we feel with this band is with each album we can tour new countries and territories. That’s inspiring. It seems like we will return to the US next year, it’s been twenty years. We are discussing Australia, and some exotic countries like South Korea. We are late with the planning, but we are planning it now.